Cooking appliances, e.g., cooktops or ranges (also known as hobs or stoves), generally include one or more heated portions for heating or cooking food items within or on a cooking utensil placed on the heated portion. For instance, each heated portion may be provided as burners, resistive heating elements, inductive heating elements, or radiant heaters may be included with each heated portion. The heated portions utilize one or more heating sources to output heat, which is transferred to the cooking utensil and thereby to any food item or items that are positioned on or within the cooking utensil. For instance, a griddle may be provided to extend across one or more heated portion. When positioned above the heated portion, the griddle generally provides a substantially flat cooking surface.
Although a griddle may provide a flat cooking surface, difficulties may arise in dispersing or spreading heat across the flat cooking surface. Generally, heat from the heated portions of the appliance is directly transferred or conducted to the griddle according to the footprint of the heated portion. Heat may be localized according to the general shape of the heated portion. In other words, heat may be uneven across various portions of the flat cooktop surface. This may result in only a limited portion of the flat cooking surface being heated, or being heated to a significantly higher temperature than the rest of the flat cooking surface (i.e., creating “hot spots”). For instance, in systems including round heated portions, a round “hot spot” may be formed on the flat cooking surface during use. If the griddle extends over multiple burners, such hot spots may be increasingly problematic and cause food items thereon to be cooked unevenly.
Some existing systems have tried to address difficulties temperature distribution by forming the griddle with an increased thickness or mass to slow conduction of heat from the bottom of the griddle to the flat cooktop surface. Other existing systems have added, for instance, vertical fins that extend along the bottom portion of the griddle to vary heat conduction from a heated portion to the flat cooktop surface.
However, further improvements are necessary to improve cooking performance. It would be advantageous to provide a cooktop appliance that supplies even heating across a cooking surface. Specifically, it would be advantageous to provide a griddle assembly that evenly distributes heat across a predetermined cooking surface.